A Battle Plan for the Democrats (Written before 9-11 and worth while reading now.)

WASHINGTON — It's striking — and for us Democrats, embarrassing — that it took a Republican to unmask the Bush agenda. When Jim Jeffords quit the G.O.P., he spoke powerful truths about the truly radical nature of what President Bush is trying to achieve. Too many in our party have been sleepwalking as George W. Bush has audaciously sought to deny the federal government the money and the power to have a positive effect on people's lives.

Senator Jeffords, a lifelong Republican who had stuck it out through the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions, said he quit the G.O.P. because he disagrees with the president "on very fundamental issues — the issues of choice, the direction of the judiciary, tax and spending decisions, missile defense, energy and the environment, and a host of other issues, large and small." Democrats should use their new majority status to speak — and act — against the right-wing agenda Mr. Jeffords was protesting. .

Without the moral authority of a clear electoral mandate, Mr. Bush is hardly in a position to dictate the sort of sweeping program he has been pushing. Here's a battle plan for stopping him, emphasizing three tactics. .

First, call a radical a radical. Mr. Bush's agenda is neither compassionate nor conservative; it's radical and it's dangerous, and Democrats should say so. Mr. Bush is proposing a diminution of the government's ability to protect its citizens that is breathtaking in its scope. .

His environmental agenda would put more arsenic in the water and more pollutants in the air. His Social Security plan will cost $1 trillion to implement and will hand over Americans' retirement benefits to the vagaries of the stock market. And his missile defense system will cost untold billions, alienate our allies and, even according to its proponents, may not work..

With the complicity of a dozen Democratic senators, Mr. Bush has already pushed through a tax cut that will cost the federal treasury at least $4 trillion over the next two decades (despite being advertised at only $1.35 trillion) and will put the United States in a fiscal straitjacket for a generation or more. And that's just for starters. In an interview in The Financial Times last week, Mr. Bush's Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, called for the total elimination of all taxes on all corporations, to be replaced by higher taxes on individuals. Mr. O'Neill said he favors an end to the federal commitment to Social Security and Medicare. The Financial Times — hardly a left-wing bastion — called his ideas "radical." .

But where were the Democrats? If a Democratic Treasury secretary had called for a comparably radical left-wing agenda — say, nationalizing the oil companies — the Republicans would have called for his resignation..

Democrats must speak out. Every element of the Bush agenda, from the tax cuts to the judicial appointments to the regulatory retreat, would minimize the federal government's help for people while maximizing corporate influence. Everything the federal government does that helps people, from helping to put police officers on the street to financing Medicare, is at risk in this revolution. .

Second, the Democrats must work to spend and shrink: spend the money and shrink the tax cut. Since most of the Bush tax cut's more onerous provisions don't take effect for years, there is plenty of time to fix things. If Republicans can propose repealing years of health and environmental laws, Democrats can propose repealing the most damaging aspects of the Bush tax cut. .

Fully fund a prescription drug benefit for the elderly. Commit the country to reducing school class sizes by hiring 100,000 new teachers. Finance school construction and renovation. Increase military pay and benefits. Extend health care coverage to millions of Americans. Fund the priorities Democrats would have funded if there were no tax cut, and pay for it by trimming the more outrageous giveaways in the Bush tax cut. Force Congress and the country to come to grips with the real-world trade-offs that were ignored or glossed over in the rush to cut taxes. .

Democrats ought to continue to raise alternative tax cuts: refundable credits for the working poor, reductions in the Social Security payroll tax, a repeal of the "pre-death tax" that requires middle-class elderly people to impoverish themselves in order to qualify for long- term care — these tax cuts for the poor and middle class should be offered as replacements for the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Even if they don't pass, proposing them and fighting for them will offer the public a stark choice — the kind of distinctions on which elections are won. If Republicans want to run for re-election as the party that killed middle- class benefits in order to preserve tax breaks for the wealthy, Democrats can emerge with a healthy majority, and then we can defuse the time bomb of the Bush tax cut. But we have to wage the battle in order to win it. .

The Democrats should realize that their political future and the national interest in expanding education, health care and retirement security are one and the same. Speaking about the surplus, Senator Phil Gramm, a Republican, was candid enough to admit, "If the Democrats could spend it all, they could be the majority party for another 50 years." .

There is enormous risk in this strategy: if Republicans pass the spending programs but defeat attempts to reduce the tax cut, we will be plunged back into deficits. But better the risk of deficits than the reality of an emaciated and emasculated national government for decades. When forced to choose, the American people will demand that the savage inequalities of the Bush tax cut for the rich be tamed in order to fund important priorities for the middle class..

Third, when push comes to shove, the Democrats should obstruct. They should push a positive agenda, passing a patients' bill of rights, an increase in the minimum wage and campaign finance reform — filling Mr. Bush's desk with progressive legislation and defying him to veto it. But if Mr. Bush continues to push his radical agenda, offering right-wing judicial nominees and environmental policies that threaten our air and water, Senate Democrats may have no option other than to obstruct. They should not shrink from that duty. Stop signs save lives. .

We don't believe the spin that stopping Mr. Bush's assault on middle- class programs will hurt Democrats with voters. Bob Dole helped lead his party to victory in 1994 by stopping everything he could — from Bill Clinton's economic stimulus package to his health care plan — and Mr. Clinton's proposals were far more popular than Mr. Bush's are. If Democrats are seen as the people who save America from Mr. Bush's right-wing agenda, they will be regarded as principled, courageous and effective..

Accommodation with the radical Bush agenda — offering a kinder, gentler Mr. Bush, as it were — is a prescription for policy failure and political defeat. But if Democrats follow Jim Jeffords's lead and speak with candor and conviction about George W. Bush's misdirected plans, if they stiffen their spines and use their power to stand up for the majority of Americans, who rejected the Bush agenda in the November election, they will be worthy of the majority status Jim Jeffords has given them. .

James Carville and Paul Begala were political advisers to President Clinton. They are currently writing a book on political strategy. .

And they got a pay raise.
Who do they think will pay for all their programs? Unemployed Democrat voters? Yeh, right.
Do the voluntary tax. Let's see who really thinks we need these programs - Democrat politicians, or the American people. It's the only bipartisan way to do it.

Everything the federal government does that helps people, from helping to put police officers on the street to financing Medicare, is at risk in this revolution.

Stupid question, but someone's gotta ask:

"Where in the Constitution is the Federal Government authorized to do any of this?"

Don't you know...the idea of 'Constructive Powers'...a concept where we and/or the states retain everything no expressly given to the central gov't has now be reversed. We now get our rights from what the gov't says or allows. Personally, I think the Consitution is dying at an ever increasing rate. JMHO. The founders wouldn't reconginze it's workings today. They'd see the structure, but be shocked..and dismayed at its workings

hmmmm...CARville...carVille......uhm, oh I know...thats a used carlot just outside of Biloxi??...(I could be wrong...is it FRieday yet?...darn!...I didn't really think so...)

FMCDH

Mr. Bush is proposing a diminution of the government's ability to protect its citizens that is breathtaking in its scope.

The Clinton administration did more to destroy the ability of the government to protect citizens than any administration in history. The Clinton traitors gutted the military, demoralized those who remained and virtually abandoned border control. Their leftist State Department recklessly distributed visas to those who killed us on September 11th and many more who are still here waiting their opportunity to kill us in even greater numbers and in more barbaric atrocities.

Carville and Begala are lying trash.

There is enormous risk in this strategy: if Republicans pass the spending programs but defeat attempts to reduce the tax cut, we will be plunged back into deficits. But better the risk of deficits than the reality of an emaciated and emasculated national government for decades. When forced to choose, the American people will demand that the savage inequalities of the Bush tax cut for the rich be tamed in order to fund important priorities for the middle class..

I've never seen them admit it. They will risk throwing the country into a real recession just to feed their idol of bloated government.

First, call a radical a radical. Mr. Bush's agenda is neither compassionate nor conservative; it's radical and it's dangerous,...[to Democrats.]

Back To Basics for the Republican Party, by Michael Zak:


How many Americans know why the Republican Party began
or what its original purpose was? Not many!  How many
Americans know, for example, that the 1964 Civil Rights
Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act were reforms that the
Republican Party struggled for in vain during the
Reconstruction era a hundred years earlier? Fewer still.
The 13th amendment banning slavery, the 14th amendment 
extending the Bill of Rights to the states, and the 15th
amendment according voting rights to blacks - all three
were enacted by the much-maligned Radical Republicans in
the face of fierce Democrat opposition.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK!!!

CARville...carVille......uhm, oh I know...thats a used carlot just outside of Biloxi??

Actually, it's a historic Cajun name. Oridinally Carve-Ille, derived from "Carve-Ille la Patisse", which describes what his ancestors did with the goods after stealing pies cooling on housewives' window sills.

...audaciously sought to deny the federal government the money and the power to have a positive effect on people's lives.

Don't ya just love it? He has the audacity to charge that Bush would deny those who audaciously seek to give the federal government the money and the power it doesn't have, to have a negative effect on people's lives.

Sacco and Vanzetti (er, Carville and Begala, but I repeat myself) were Clintonistas to the bone. This article is more revealing for showing how they governed -- they truly believed that they were the only thing standing between the country and the Fourth Reich. Such moral superiority is dangerous, and explains why they viewed political issues not as vigorous debates but as personal survival matches (hence the "War Room"). It wasn't enough to have a better argument or regroup when the other guy has a better argument -- they had to destroy the humanity of anyone who disagreed with them. After all, if you believe yourself to be morally superior, then anyone who questions your judgment must have an evil purpose. Dubya does not see the world this way at all (sometimes to the chagrin of his supporters), and it makes Sacco and Vanzetti crazy. They are so batty that the only reason any media outlet gives them any credibility is the media's own built-in liberal bias.

government tax voucher system

you still pay the same in taxes, but you get to decide which programs your money goes to!!

who's with me??

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